With recent attempts across the country to limit access to abortion and contraception, the library’s collections are particularly relevant. More than 135 collections document the long history of women’s struggle for reproductive freedom and the history of contraception in the United States. Not least among them is the Mary Ware Dennett Collection.

The Schlesinger Library's Gerda Lerner papers focus primarily on her life in the United States and on her professional life as a historian and activist, but in interviews in the collection and in her powerful memoir Fireweed, Lerner opens a window onto the early years that shaped the woman she became.